Day 297 Writing Short Stories

Collar

The clerical collar was a giveaway. It always made other people stir around him uncomfortably when he rode the tube. They shifted away from him as if he were the plague, yet the damned and crazy came. They were drawn to his collar, seeking salvation for their ailments. He spoke in soft tones. He guided them to seek his congregation. Some came. Some just needed a fleeting second of clarity as they returned to their lives.

Today, he hid his collar under the huge winter jacket. Today, he needed solitude more than he needed to be there for the others. Today, he was invisible.

Actress

The woman swinging the blade was his mother. He watched in utter shock as the warrior babe hopped on the horse after cutting a man’s head off. She was his mother. She had to be. He had seen images of her in her twenties, and the woman looked just the spitting image of his mother. He had accidentally bought the VHS tape at the flea market, finding the desert cover cool and so vintage.

He watched the entire movie in silence. The warrior babe, his mother, was awesome. And now, she drove his little sister to her soccer practice and made sure he had his lunch with him. She was nothing like the woman who rode the horse and swung the blade like a bad as bitch.

He had thought the film would be a good reference for his comic, but now it felt wrong to draw his own mother as the heroine. He shuddered at the thought. And he felt angry, too. Why hadn’t she told them about her past as an actress? Why had she hidden it?

He wanted to ask her all the questions, but he wouldn’t. It all went wrong. Maybe the woman wasn’t her after all.

He took the VHS out of the VCR and hid it in his room.

Wish

Every year on her birthday, a girl wishes something magical would happen. On her twenty-first birthday, her wish came true. I skipped this one.

The prompts are from the book A Year of Creative Writing Prompts.

I have the cutest cat napping on my desk. He is fully asleep, snoring happily. I have nothing to add today. Just enjoying the presence of my cat and the sunny, frosty spring morning.

Thank you for reading ❤ Have a lovely day!